Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Once Upon a Time, Season 3, Episode 17: The Jolly Roger

Flashback to the Enchanted Forest and Hook actually
putting together some of his crew again (including Smee) for the purpose of
robbing people, of course. Land Pirates! (Also known as Brigands or Bandits,
but pirates sound way cooler). He is beloved by his crew, an entire bar and the
prostitute they hire at least pretends to be fairly beloveding – but once Hook’s
outside he pays the woman off and asks her to leave and lie about what happened.
He settles in for a good ol’ angst when Ariel clubs him on the back of the
head.

Back to the present! David and Emma are defeated by an
Ikea crib and Regina has a protection spell for Mary Margaret’s precious unborn
baby. Emma doesn’t want to hide behind a protection spell – she wants to go all
aggressive after Regina teaches her how to use her
often-forgotten-but-conveniently-reappearing-when-the-story-demands-it-magic.

Regina agrees – but Emma goes all in or goes home – no half
measures, no partial commitment. Mary Margaret and David throw around angsty
eyes. They don’t criticise but they do object to Emma not having them look
after Henry – because Henry, without his memories – finds the Soggy Ones very
very very very very boring and baby obsessed and boring. Really Boring. Unlike
Hook – who is awesome.

Hook has his own problems – like Smee and his crew
demanding they hit the high seas again (Jolly Roger vs Supertanker. That should
be fun). Smee just can’t understand why they’re staying in town. But Emma shows
up to tell Hook her plan and why she needs him to babysit – but also adds that
Henry belongs in the real world and after Zelina’s finished, she’s “done”. Hook
thinks this won’t work because Emma can’t just pretend all the magic stuff
never happened – he tried in the year he remembered which no-one else does but
he refuses to talk about (ominous foreshadowing ahoy)

And Ariel washes up on shore – noticed by Mary Margaret
and David taking a walk and lamenting their lack of funness. Wait, didn’t
Regina just put a protection spell on their house? Anyway, Ariel has been
looking for Prince Eric in all the seas of the world (maybe she should have
tried dry land) and failed to find him. Time to ask Hook – because in that year
of randomness, I’m sure he was keeping track of fishy love interests.

Time to pick up the flashback – Ariel thought Hook had
kidnapped Eric because Eric was kidnapped by pirates on the Jolly Roger –
except Hook doesn’t have his ship any more. But he does want it back. The only
clue to the identity of the people who have the Roger and Eric is the dagger
Ariel has – with 2 Bs on the hilt.

Blackbeard. And Smee isn’t eager to go against him for the ship, but Hook is
convinced he needs it to feel whole again (anyone laying odds that the reason
Hook doesn’t feel right is the lack of Emma, not the ship?)

Back to Storybrooke where Hook denies all knowledge of
Prince Eric. Of course he doesn’t get away with it that easy and the Charmings
insist on dragging him into the search, sending him off with Ariel to search Rumple’s
shop for something that Eric owned. That calls for a flashback drawing
attention to the cloak Eric left Ariel (and Hook’s deep ambivalence about being
considered a hero and his passionate insistence that he’s still a pirate.
Honest).

Having found the cloak we get another flashback of Hook,
Ariel and Smee finding the Jolly Roger and Hook challenging Black Beard over
ownership of the ship – eyeliner vs eyeliner! They fight (classic silhouette
homage!) and Hook wins – by superior knowledge of the ship. But Ariel stops him
slicing and dicing until Hook gets news of Eric. Blackbeard takers this as
proof that Hook has gone soft and is no longer a ruthless pirate: his price for
Eric’s location is the Roger.

And to the present where the locator spell on Eric’s
cloak leads them to the harbour – and to it instantly sinking in the water.
Ariel assumes Eric has drown – and Hook looks all angsty. She tells him what a
nice man Hook is.

Flashback to that niceman putting Blackbeard on the plank
while Ariel begs him to spare the other pirate for Eric’s sake. Blackbeard is
pushed off the plank and Hook has a new crew. Ariel slaps him and jumps over
the side looking for Eric.

In the present, guilty Hook confesses all to Ariel who
slaps him again. He promises to do anything she wants to help – and she asks
him to swear on the name of the woman he loves: Emma Swan. And then there’s a
puff of green magic – Ariel was never here it was Zelena all along plotting to
get Hook to make that oath – which means next time he kisses Emma, she will
lose all of her magic. Hook resolves not to kiss her so Zelena threatens her
with the Dark One; but Hook’s not a fool. If she could have just killed Emma,
she would have; she wouldn’t have left her alive and watched by Flying Monkies.
So she threatens Henry instead.

Apparently Eric and Ariel found each other long before
and they’re pretty happy now outside the curse

In the storylines-no-one-cares-about category, David teaches
12 year old Henry how to drive to prove he can be fun too. (Mary Margaret drips
soggily from the sidelines).

And Regina and Emma have their tutor session with a side
order of Regina questioning whether a villainous pirate should really be top of
the go-to list for babysitters for their son. Anyway, back to teaching which
Regina takes very sensibly but Emma is frustrated at the concept of book
learning after 3 seconds and demands Rumple’s way – fine, but that way is
harsh, brutal and involves Regina teleporting Emma on top of a rickety rope
bridge over a ravine. Which she then destroys – at the last second Emma puts
together a floating raft with the falling wood. Regina is pissed – because Emma
has all this magic skill and power and she hasn’t developed it.

Hook goes to see Emma and for some bizarre reason he
doesn’t tell her and Regina what Zelena did. Instead he makes up a story which
Regina insists on checking out, using Emma’s super magic and a mirror. They do
see Ariel and Eric together – not realising they have just been reunited.

Ebveryone distracted by David and Henry coming home with the soggy one and
talking how fun underaged, unlicensed driving is (Regina is not amused). Before
Hook leaves them to their little celebration (angst cannot party!) Emma tells
him she’s not bothered by whatever he did during the year only he can remember.
For MOAR angst. He decides to stalk her from afar instead for mooooooore angst.

Can I say again how very wrong Emma’s decision to return
to the “real world” after defeating Zelina is? She’s expecting Henry to settle
for an entirely fictional past for the sake of peace of mind, which is rather
disrespectful – and more woundingly, she’s denying Henry access to an entire
family he doesn’t even know he has. He has 3 living grandparents he doesn’t
even know and, more importantly, there’s Regina with far more claim to
motherhood over Henry than ever Emma had – after this show finally backtracked
on seasons of extremely questionable depictions of Regina’s motherhood, they
started to pull it back and give Regina the respect and parentage she deserved –
and now amnesia is unwriting that. And Emma takes this amnesia as carte blanche
to deny Regina any part in Henry’s life? To decide she gets to choose who is
and isn’t Henry’s family?

Also – make Emma powerfully magic? Sure. But more
powerful than Regina? Why? Why do this? Why must Regina be supplanted not once,
not twice, but three times in the thing she excels at. I could just about
stomach Rumple because that was the inherent core of the show (though it is a
problem we will expand on), Zelena is the antagonist and would fail badly if
Regina could just win – but Emma too?

As for the episode – meh and shenanigans. I call
shenanigans that Hook would decide to angst in a corner and not tell the gang
Zelena’s latest plot. And I call shenanigans on Regina demanding Emma’s total
commitment then seconds later Emma declaring she’s going to abandon Storybrooke
for New York AND she gives up on study after 3 seconds. I call shenanigans that
it was even plausible that Ariel would need Hook’s help specifically to search
Rumple’s shop. Seriously, are the Charmings so useless now they can’t show
Ariel to a shop (no-one expected Hook to be able to recognise the cloak because
of his lies)?

And I call shenanigans on the Charmings. Why were they even here?

The ending somewhat undid the meh because it added actual
meaning to what a painfully pointless episode until this point (did anyone actually
care about Ariel? Was Hook’s growth and change not already implied? Hook is no
longer an evil pirate – well, he swapped sides from Cora to fighting against
Pan. Yeah, I think we got that memo). And yes it was all made relevant after
the fact – but a pertinent ending doesn’t change 40 minutes of “I’m sorry, do
we care?”